Nuttiness and Ewoks With Marfan's Syndrome

So yesterday I was so out of it, I left my keys in the mailbox and then called a fucking locksmith because I couldn't find them in the store!

It's basic common sense, of course, that if you can't find your keys, the first place you check is the locks you commonly use. But no-oooo-ooo: I had to sweep every inch of the store including the incredibly disgusting area around the storage shelves; I had to entertain malign fantasies about every customer who'd wandered into the store over the past three hours ("They saw the keys on the counter and they snagged them! They're going to come back in the middle of the night and steal hot sauce!")

I think I was just looking for an excuse to flip.

I'm not sure why going psychotic holds such immense appeal for me. Maybe because I saw my mother do it a lot when I was growing up.

Anyway, the common sense part of me stepped in at that point. ("Nothing is gained if customers walk into the store and see you on your knees praying to a non-existent God to make your keys materialize…") Can't find your keys? Call a fucking locksmith and get the lock changed.

And of course the moment the locksmith walked in through the door, I found the keys.

Fifty-dollar service call charge. Cheaper than therapy.

Later that afternoon Homer's head fell off, precipitating yet another mini-psychotic break. A piece had broken off his neck but I was too exhausted and crazed to register that and so kept jamming the head back on to a quarter inch rim of thin plastic, muttering more imprecations to the non-existent God: forget all those children with terminal leukemia, forget all those civilians in Iraq; the make-or-break miracle is a fully functioning Homer Simpson who dances and sings in front of my store!

Oh, I tell you, I'm nutty.

Fortunately in the basement I have one more intact Homer Simpson.

Came home very late to find a sink filled with dishes, a starving eleven year old and an infuriatingly self-possessed nineteen year old who wouldn't drop everything to run down to the store with the freshly salvaged Homer head because he had other plans.

"Just chill, Mom," Max said sternly. And though this was maddening advice – I mean, I'd like the whole world to join me in ranting and raving and screaming and slamming doors – still, it was sensible advice. So I chilled. And washed dishes. And made dinner.

"You know, Max – if the sink is filled with dishes, it wouldn't hurt you to wash them."

"But I didn't dirty them. Or most of them."

"No?" I lift a plate. "Here's the plate from your dinner last night." I lift another. "Here's a plate from your casa dia. I've already done the glasses so I can't tell them apart, but there were two gallons of orange juice in the fridge on Tuesday and now there's none and I suspect you've drunk your fair share –"

Nothing a vacation wouldn't cure, I suppose. Or winning Lotto.

In other news, I managed to hunt down a day camp for Robin. The YMCA.

"I won't go!" screamed Robin. "I hate the YMCA!"

"You will go," I said in a calm and level voice. After all, Robin is not a missing set of keys or a plastic Homer Simpson head.

Also, a guy who worked at the Osio with Alex is coming into the store today for an interview. I called Marybeth: "Could you check with Alex and tell me what he thinks of the guy?"

Marybeth reported back. "Oh dear, Patty. Alex says he's the nicest guy in the world, but he scares customers. He looks like a cross between an Ewok and Abraham Lincoln."

Great. Just what I need.